Page 9 of Redline
For the next hour, we fell into a rhythm that actually felt... normal. Luka was surprisingly good at the mindless repetition of it, though he kept trying to engineer a faster way to foldthe tissue paper, which usually resulted in him accidentally launching a gold-foiled mint across the table.
A few tables over, I caught sight of Sienna. It was the best free entertainment I’d had in years. She was staring at a roll of double-sided tape like it was a live explosive. She’d try to peel a piece, get it stuck to one of her manicured nails, and then let out a huff of pure, concentrated tragedy before looking around to see if anyone was coming to rescue her.
“She’s going to lose a limb to that tape,” I muttered, nodding toward her without looking up from my own stack.
Luka glanced over, snorting as Sienna nearly knocked over a vase while trying to shake a sticky scrap off her thumb. “She once tried to help Dominic clean his visor after a practice run and ended up smearing it with expensive lip gloss. My father almost had an aneurysm.”
“And yet, here she is. Suffering for the cause,” I remarked, watching her finally give up and start scrolling through her phone behind a stack of boxes.
“The ‘cause’ being my brother’s attention span,” Luka corrected dryly. “It’s a full-time job with zero benefits and a very high turnover rate.”
High turnover rate.Him? Shocking. Truly.
I laughed, a real one this time. It wasn't about the Valerio name or school or the mess in the pool house. It was just the shared, weary humor of two people who knew exactly how much gravity that name pulled. I liked him, but in the way you like a fellow soldier in a trench you didn't ask to be in.
I picked up another ribbon, turning it once between my fingers before setting it down. I didn’t need to figure them out. I just needed to make it to the end without letting this place change me.
Chapter three
Dominic
If one more idiot told me the suspension issue was "probably just temperature variance," I was going to put someone through a wall.
"It’s pulling left in high-G corners," I snapped, pacing a tight, predatory line in front of the matte-black beast. "Not drifting, not sliding. Pulling. That’s not a temperature problem."
Marco, my head mechanic and part-time pain in my ass, didn’t even look up from his tablet.
"Maybe if the driver didn’t treat every turn like a personal dare to physics, the toe settings would still be aligned," he said, his thumb scrolling through data with irritating nonchalance.
"Itwasaligned," I shot back.
Marco finally lifted his gaze, eyes flat and unimpressed. "Before you decided braking was optional."
I glared. He arched a brow.
Point made.
I’d spent the morning shredding the track, trying to force the problem to show itself. It only betrayed me once, right at the apex. A half-second jolt—a shudder that vibrated through my teeth and up my spine. The kind of infinitesimal slip the cameras would slow down and analysts would dissect like vultures over roadkill.
My grip had slipped. My control.
And the team had seen it.
Nothing rots confidence faster than doubt spreading through the garage, and I could smell the stench of it on the air. Besides, chasing imaginary problems in the steering rack felt infinitely preferable to whatever was waiting for me inside.
Marco swiped through the telemetry again, his mouth thinning. "Sponsors are already sniffing around the issue."
The wordsponsorstasted like rust. Sponsors meant headlines, and headlines were the first step toward an autopsy. They didn't just want to see me win; they wanted to see if the gold was plating or solid through to the core. If they started looking too closely, they’d find the tremor. They’d find the reason the car had pulled—not because of "temperature variance," but because for one sickening heartbeat, the steering wheel had felt disconnected in my palms.
I glanced down at my right hand, my thumb surreptitiously rubbing the side of my index finger. A faint, distant buzzing lived there now, a hum beneath the skin that felt like the fading vibration of an engine.
If the press caught wind that a Valerio was anything less than a perfect machine, they wouldn’t just write stories. They’d dismantle me.
Marco clicked his tongue, oblivious to the way I was digging my nails into my thigh to ground the creeping pins-and-needles in my skin.
"Press, too. They’re already spinning stories. Something about you losing focus." He paused just long enough to be dramatic. "And the fact that your social calendar is less pit strategy and more… bedroom scheduling."
I shot him a look that could’ve melted titanium.
